Unless otherwise indicated herein, the approaches described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Embodiments relate to financial reporting, and in particular to such reporting systems and methods integrating market segment data (e.g., profitability data).
Business enterprises increasingly rely upon complex business software for a variety of purposes, including financial reporting. Commonly, profitability information is stored in a database comprising entities (such as structured data objects) that are different from those of a separate database that tracks accounting information of the enterprise.
Different databases have historically been used for profitability and general accounting information for a variety of reasons. One is that the profitability data may provide additional market segment information, while the general accounting information is relied upon for different purposes (such as legal purposes).
Such storage of profitability and accounting data in separate databases, may give rise to a number of challenges. One is reconciliation of data persistence between the two databases. This can require a substantial effort with ongoing system configuration activities.
Lack of transparency is another issue that may arise from separate storage of profitability and accounting information. In particular, an inability to easily link profitability data with financial documents can hinder the recognition of important case-and-effect relationships by a user.
Reporting is still another aspect that may be affected by separate storage of profitability and accounting information. For example, profitability data may be posted in the profitability database as a batch job during the end-of-period activities (e.g., settlement). As a result, only backwards reporting (i.e., profitability-to-financials) may be possible. The latest available profitability reporting may thus not be current, instead reflecting only data of a previous time period.
In addition, the market segments/characteristics provided for the profitability database, may only available for revenues and costs to provide multi-level contribution margin reporting. Balance accounts are not included.